Taming Guide: Every Animal & Flute

Taming turns the things that hunt you into the things that fight for you. Wolves, bears and mammoths all roam the map, and with the right flute they escort you instead of ambushing you.

It added the Taming Update on 4 October 2025. A few guide sites still carry 2026 dates for it; those do not match the official update log, so treat October 2025 as the release.

Last verified: 2026-09-29.

The Taming and Husbandry badges are both paid through this flute system; both are listed with their diamond values on our All Badges page.

The mini-game is the fishing mini-game: keep the bar in the zone and do not let the fill drop. If the timing is new to you, practise on a pond for free first — our fishing guide covers it step by step.

How Taming Actually Works

Taming runs like fishing: a skill mini-game, then a feeding step, repeated.

1. Equip the Taming Flute and approach an eligible, undamaged animal. A green ring appears.
2. Win the mini-game. A bar with a moving marker appears; keep the marker inside the green band. The longer you hold it there, the faster the taming meter fills. Fail and the animal gets agitated — that cycle resets.
3. Feed it what it asks for. Drag the food onto the animal to flip one angry face happy.
4. Repeat. The number of angry faces floating above its head is the number of full cycles you owe it. Hearts and a paw print mean it is yours.

So a Bunny is one cycle and about twenty seconds. A Mammoth is five cycles and a whole-run project.

The cheap Taming badge sits alongside the badge stack a speedrun in 99 Nights in the Forest can carry in one run.

The free flutes are in the Abandoned Animal Shelter, mapped on our Cabins page.

Flutes are free at the shelter, and the camp's food vendor is the Fairy, covered on her page.

Getting and Upgrading the Flute

Where to find an Old Taming Flute. The animal shelter structure near camp — sources call it the Abandoned Animal Shelter or the Domestication Cabin, and an older Flute Tent was removed, so ignore guides that still mention the tent. It usually holds several, so a whole team can start at once. The Pelt Trader and rare chests are the backups.

How to upgrade. The flute is not consumed, only upgraded — but you cannot jump straight to the top tier. You earn taming XP first, by taming animals and by feeding injured pets the food they were tamed with. Once the XP bar fills, take the flute to the Upgrade Station (the Workshop, shown as crossed tools on the map) — the campfire gate on that building, the six names sources give it, and what each tier unlocks are on the Taming Flute page.

The practical route: tame Bunnies and Wolves first to build XP, upgrade to Good, tame an Alpha Wolf or two, then upgrade to Strong before touching Bears.

Several of those ask for specific fish, which hand-farming makes slow and the cheapest rod class makes routine. See Fisherman Class for the list.

One row in that table carries an asterisk you have to add yourself: Kiwi costs a single Berry and a single cycle, and it still asks for Campfire Level 6.

The Bunny is the only tame whose entire bill is one Carrot, one cycle on the Old Flute, and that single row runs the early economy.

The Arctic Fox is the one entry on that list with a Chili on its bill, and our Chili page is where that bill is dated for you.

Chili only ever arrives from a Seed Pack, as our Seed Packs page explains. The Bunny is the first row of that table and the cheapest complete tame in the game, one Carrot and one cycle with no gates.

One row of that table is a single Berry, the Kiwi, and our Berry page is where that row's real cost lives.

Every Tameable Animal

Food amounts below are the running total across all cycles. That is why sources look like they disagree — a Mammoth wants 2 Pumpkin + 1 Cake per cycle, which is 10 Pumpkin + 5 Cake across five.

Read the speech bubble in your own run. The Wolf and Alpha Wolf requirements are the two that vary between runs and between published guides. Everything above is the most commonly reported version.

Two of these class level counters run on the same taming numbers you already farm. Our class levels guide totals them against every other class.

Every pet slot you open is paid for in taming food, and our Steak page is where the Steak column of that bill comes from for the Wolf, the Fox and the Bear.

How Many Pets You Can Hold

Taming past your limit means releasing or replacing one. See Best Class if you are deciding whether a taming class is worth the Diamonds — the Beastmaster class is the one that changes what late game looks like, and every one of its perks is listed on its own page.

What they do is eat, repeatedly, out of the same food table you are eating from. What each item is worth is on the hunger page.

What Pets Do, and What They Don't

They do: follow you, attack hostile creatures once provoked, guard camp, and pick up loose items like Morsels and Bunny Feet. After taming, the anger bar is replaced by a jolly bar showing loyalty.

They don't:

• Carry over between runs. Taming resets every session, so plan it per run rather than as a permanent investment.

• Start damaged. An animal that has already taken damage cannot be tamed.

• Include every wolf you see. Wolves that spawn as part of a night attack cannot normally be tamed — and neither can the collared guard variants standing outside the missing kids' caves. Those red, blue and yellow collars mean no. See Missing Kids Locations for exactly where you will meet them.

• The cooking step people skip. Chef and Cook — taming food and eating food run through the same fire, and skipping it costs you pets and health.

Mistakes That Cost You a Pet

• Turning up without the food. Read the requirement first; going back to camp mid-tame usually means the animal wanders or night arrives.
• Taming at dusk. You are committed to several cycles, and The Deer does not wait.
• Chasing a Mammoth on day three. Build flute XP on easy animals first.
• Skipping the cooking. Stew, Cake and Chili all need a functioning camp setup — which is a wood problem, see How to Get Wood Fast.
• Forgetting bandages. A failed attempt can turn into a fight.

Weapon mistakes cost whole runs too, and our Scythe page covers the one weapon people end up buying twice.

Quick Reference

Related Pages

• Missing Kids Locations — the collared wolves you cannot tame, and why
• How to Get Wood Fast — the campfire that cooks your taming food
• Best Class — whether Beastmaster or Zookeeper is worth it
• The Deer — why taming at dusk is a bad idea